1 in 3 cases of blindness occur due to late intervention

A team of doctors from Regional Institute of Ophthalmology and Madras Medical College examined the medical history of 302 students in two schools – Little Flower Convent in T Nagar and St Louis school for the blind in Adyar.TNN | August 22, 2017, 09:01 IST

(Representative image)CHENNAI: Blindness could have been averted in nearly one out of three children if medical intervention was sought early, a new study that covered two city-based schools for the blind has found.

A team of doctors from Regional Institute of Ophthalmology and Madras Medical College examined the medical history of 302 students in two schools – Little Flower Convent in T Nagar and St Louis school for the blind in Adyar. They found that while visual impairment in 45% of them were because of “incurable causes”, in 31% it could have been avoided.

Dr M V Prakash, one of the authors, said the team set out to study the medical history of these students, including their family history, to pin the reason for their blindness and plan early intervention programmes. “Literature on reasons for paediatric visual impairment in Chennai is limited. Studies from other regions cannot be applied here as prevalence of and reasons for blindness varies based on the nutrition intake, culture and sanitation,” he said. The study was recently published in the Indian Journal of ophthalmology.

A majority of the subjects in the study – whose ages varied from 5 to 16 years were girls. While 15% of the children were completely blind, the rest had various degrees of visual impairment – some able to perceive light, others having blurred vision in one eye while being completely blind in the other. Around 21% of the students, the study found, had a history.

Researchers found that one of the leading causes of blindness were disorders in the optic nerve – the nerve that carries impulses from the retina at the back of the eye to the brain, followed by retinal and corneal disorders, lens-related problems and congenital anomalies.

“Among those that were preventable, we found corneal scarring to be most prevalent,” said Dr Prakash, attributing it to Vitamin A deficiency and infections like measles and trauma.